Birds in the Eighty-Seventh Empyrean
by Li Kayun
Summary: (Wild Arms 2) Marivel Story - Because it's not so bad, being lonely when there's someone else to be lonely with.


Disclaimer: I do not own Wild Arms 2.

Author's Notes: Wild Arms Advanced Third comes out this Thursday…in Japan. Marivel appears in Advanced Third also. But for now, I'll just write about the Marivel in the second game. 

Background Information: You must know that Marivel is a Crimson Noble and that implies that she is a vampire. You must have known that at the end of the game, Tony Stark (the little brat that Ashley saved in his prologue mission) offers to stay with Marivel so that she won't be alone, considering that vampires live forever.

Birds in the Eighty-Seventh Empyrean

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Because loneliness isn't half as bad when there is someone else to be lonely with.

"There was a bird on the tower this morning."

Because he died when he was thirteen, he never knew what life meant and therefore, had no conception of what death was. All he knew was a lingering in an eldritch place in between, a locked golden cage that tilted in both ways at once. 

He existed solely in an old stone castle between the boundaries of heaven and hell. It was never as happy as heaven. It was rarely as gruesome as hell. He lived a life that was not alive, strung carelessly between the seams. He could not run from death. He could not run from life. He didn't have anywhere to run to.

When he died, he did not experience death, but through his blurry vision as he lay upon his deathbed, he saw her come. He could not see her mouth because it had been pressed into a thin, pale line or her blond tresses because they seemed to be the same color of her skin. He saw her eyes though, the color of blood, as she reached towards him and traced the lines of his cheek. And then he saw nothing, because he had closed his eyes as she had eaten his life and left two finely outlined punctures in the hollow of his neck.

"Oh really? I don't believe one has come in a few decades. That's really quite nice." She answered idly, kicking the heels of her boots against the stone floor as she sauntered. The dust in the air parted for her arrival, not daring to touch such a cursed and pretty thing. "Was it yellow? I like the yellow ones the best because they sing so sweetly."

"They do, do they?"

"I think so. Was it yellow?" she repeated.

"No, I think it was red. It sang quite well though, but it was a sad tune." He answered, lifting his head from the chilled windowsill to come bounding to her side. His step fell quicker than hers did, and he weighted them with time in order to make sure he didn't leave her behind.

After the first year, he had found it amazingly delightful – the fact of immortality. The second year and the third and the fourth, he still thought it was delightful that he was not old and acquainted with the bizarre male behavior that followed after childhood because he knew he did not fancy taking a liking to the female population. 

The fifth and the sixth and the seventh brought upon him the first taste of bitterness, because his friends would not play with him anymore. They were not children. He was. The eighth through the tenth brought him misery because his friends looked down upon him as a child. 

The tenth and the twentieth shoved handfuls of nothing in his mouth, as he played with nothing, was friends with nothing, was capable of nothing in everyone's eyes. But at least she had been there, watching, waiting until he realized that this was the way it would always be from now on. After that, he never quite seemed to remember what life was. It had just trickled away so quickly that he wasn't able to catch it, hands slippery with time. 

"Did it cry?"

He blinked. "Cry? I don't believe I've ever seen a bird cry." 

"I heard that the red ones cry when they sing. The one you saw didn't cry?" she asked, acknowledging his presence with a nonchalant glance. Her fingers were tangled with the laces on her apron that were always pressed and white despite the dusty surroundings, locks of hair falling over her shoulders like cascading rain. It framed her face, made her look like a paper doll. 

He shook his head vigorously because after the thirty-sixth year he decided that even vampires needed vigor. Ruefully, he admitted, "I wasn't close enough to see it. I was afraid I would scare it away. It flew off shortly after it sang though, like it was in a hurry. I would have liked it if it stayed a bit longer."

"Well, not all birds like spectators." She answered slowly, half-drawling, half dripping of sarcasm. Her cape followed her in its black splendor, spreading far from her form. It kept him from getting too close to her. It kept her from getting too close to anyone. "They usually don't like being watched."

"Like people?"

"Like people." She said. "Like mortals, like immortals, like us."

He watched her, took in her features that after the fifty-first year he found was delightfully enchanting. She really was quite pretty, if one thought about it. She was not beautiful, but definitely pretty, like a doll that closed its eyes if you wanted it to and only opened them when you stood it up straight. She was the type of doll that wore prim little bonnets and had soft shiny curls but a face that would never, ever move. 

"Marivel," he began because he finally was able to call her by her name after the nineteenth year despite that bothersome barrier that he figured was respect, "there's a reason that birds don't come, isn't there? There are birds on the roofs of all the other buildings. There are nests on the tops of all the other towers, but never on ours."

"Don't ask questions that you know the answer to." She said, curtly as she reached up with fine, white fingers to adjust the goggles that had begun to fall onto her forehead. They were beginning to ruffle her hair. 

They were going to the kitchen. He knew because he recognized the ornaments that hung upon the walls – velvet flags, coats of armor, things he had never understood. "It's a waste of time and a bother to answer them."

"The kitchen, Marivel?" he asked, the left end of his mouth pulling up and out into somewhat of a smirk. "We haven't been in the kitchen since December, when I tried to feed the kitten that wandered in."

"Well," she said slowly, shoulders rising and falling in a shrug, "You wanted to see the birds, didn't you? I can make them come." 

He almost tripped. He learned after the fifty-seventh year that Crimson Nobles, especially irate little Crimson Nobles, were extremely unpredictable – even more so, perhaps, than mortals. But he said nothing, because he also knew, after the fifty-eighth year, that when doing a deed, Crimson Nobles did not want comments. So, he said nothing about how she was doing this for him, because he wanted to see the birds, to thank her.

What he said was, "Oh." 

She seemed to have misplaced a hint of stiffness then, because there was more bounce in her dead step, her hair would pat against the back of her cape every once in a while. It would have been the only sound in the vast hallway if it had not been drowned out by their slow and pained breathing that echoed from the ceiling. Meanwhile, he was rather glad that she had accepted his silence and he walked happier, too.

"Birds," she said, matter-of-factly as she often did, as a habit, "only come because it's convenient. So therefore, if we want them to come, we must make it convenient."

"Convenient?"

She shot him a look of distaste that after the forty-fourth year he discovered was a twisted way to say she was glad that to be able to tell him something he did not know. She was the teacher, he was the student, because he died when he was thirteen and therefore knew nothing. "Convenient, meaning, of course, that we must provide all things essential for them to exist there, such as food, water, protection…"

"Happiness, love?" he asked, slowly, because he realized that she did not want to hear that after the words had left his mouth. He had tried very hard to pull them back, but it resulted in only saying them with a slur. Never was he strong enough. His expression fell slowly but surely, tumbling messily to the ground. Her mouth was turned downwards towards hell, pearled fangs pressing slightly into her bottom lip. 

"We can't," she explained with patience worn too thin, "give them that." 

"I guess they'll be able to find it themselves…if it's right." He offered shakily. 

They were nearing the kitchen and its majesty. The wooden doors that towered in their regal height were battered by the air because there was always only air to batter it. He could see the damask doorknobs from where they stood, rusted bronze with age. He had only seen the kitchen twice – once in the third year, and the other in his thirtieth, when Marivel had been capricious and succumbed to her whims to cook.

She paused, but not in hesitation and with her singsong voice she said, "Yes, they will." 

When the doors opened, they threw gusts and hollers of untouched air and chills between them to pummel whoever had dared to trespass their threshold and break their barrier. He shielded his eyelids from the wind with his wrist, but it only lasted for a second or so. When the doors had pushed everything they possibly could past them and the last wispy breezes had squeezed through the cracks, silence reigned in its almighty glory.

The kitchen was old and it was tired from not being used. It was dusty and dirty, dark and gloomy. Its only solace from its queer appearance was a solitary confined ray of light that fell through a window on the ceiling. Polished brass pans and pots hung from the walls as if they were ghostly mirrors, dulled by time and reflecting only the most obscure of silhouettes that danced in the shadows. Lightly, she said, "We should clean the kitchen sometime."

He nodded numbly in awe. 

"Go wash the pans." She commanded as she inspected the stoves, gliding gloved fingers across them and pulling away in disgust as he strode to the cabinet doors and laid forbidden fingers upon the spotted handles. She heard him cough from the dust as he pulled them open, but she did not worry because it would not kill him. Nothing would. 

"What are we making?" he asked, distantly, because he did not know what birds fancied to eat. Setting the bowls and spoons upon each other until they towered over him, he went to get the water. There was a door at the south end of the kitchen, laced with the fingers of ivy and the smell of moss. It led outside, to where there was a quaint dainty spring that dripped of life and happiness and mortality. 

"I don't know what birds eat."

"You're not a bird, I don't expect you to." 

"Do they eat salad?"

"Bread." She answered, when he returned. "We'll make bread for them, because they'll eat that. We'll need more ingredients of course, like eggs and such. I'll go out in the afternoon to buy the ingredients. The sun is much too hot today. For now, we shall clean. My kitchen is a mess." Somewhere in the dark, damp cabinets, she found remnants of what seemed to be a bag of flour, and a small barrel of sugar. 

"Those old things probably won't do for making bread now." He said lazily, propping his elbows upon the center table to hold the drooping chin. His voice was laced with childish cheer as she pulled both out with two fingers. They sagged in her arms like weights and stained the air white when she slammed them down on the table. She heard him say through his coughing fit, "They were open, Marivel! They were open!"

Three hours, forty-seven minutes and exactly thirty-two and a half seconds later, the kitchen was somewhat clean, their clothes were somewhat less chalky-looking after rubbing them relentlessly with wet fingers, and it was the afternoon. 

"Well, that wasn't so bad." He said as he clapped his hands together crisply, shooting clouds out from between his palms. "It only took about three hours, less than I would have imagined." 

"It should have taken less." She said stately. "It would have also, if you hadn't spilled the third bucket of water across the tiled floor." 

"That," he defended, "was an accident. I was the one to clean it up anyway."

"Hmm." She replied with a curt nod, inspecting her surroundings like a mother inspects a child's room. "This will do. Clean enough to bake, at least. I'll go to town in an hour or so, to get the ingredients." 

That meant an hour to do nothing, an hour to wait, which really wasn't that much when considering one who has been waiting for years for apparently nothing. She positioned herself and her skirts upon the center table, staring up at the ceiling window as it pushed columns of sunny light down to the floor beside her. 

She would not touch it because it would be painful, of course, but it was daintily magical. 

"Marivel." He called, gently. "I don't know how to bake at all. Last time I tried to help you in the kitchen, I made the cake salty." 

She grinned an almost-perfect grin that would have been perfect without the eerie fangs that glittered like moonlight in the shade. "I will teach you. You will learn if you try. It takes practice, I suppose, but you will learn. We have all the time in the world and that means plenty of time to learn. Be patient and be careful. I will turn you into a mortal if you make my bread salty." 

He chuckled to no one in particular and grew silent with the forthcoming of night, he with his constant fidgeting, her with her dress sprawled across the floor like the petals of a flower. "If we were human, I would love you." 

"If I did not kill you first." They were silent, like the wind, like the air, like the time that passed outside the ageless castle. It was not an uncomfortable silence nor was it awkward. It was something that after the twentieth year, he had found was just a way life, if that was what one called it, passed within these lonely stone walls – in silence, by oneself, with patience. 

He only happened to look at her because his arm was getting sore. As he nursed it with thin fingers and rubbed it with a simple thumb, he caught her gazing at the bit of sky she could see through the window. It was burning crimson and orange that melted into purples and blues; it was the sunset. She seemed trance-like, a timid smile quivering on her mouth.

He thought her very pretty.

He had noticed, after the sixty-ninth year, that Marivel never saw the sky much, that Marivel never saw anything outside the castle much at that. And it was then he thought her to be the loneliest girl in all Filgaia – even lonelier than Anastasia, who was locked in solitary confinement for all eternity, because Marivel had no reason to stay in the castle other than the fact that she didn't want to leave. Anyone who wanted to be alone, must really be rather lonely. 

It was for that reason that eighty-seven years ago, when he was thirteen, that he did not regret the feeble nod he had given her upon the deathbed's pillow that allowed her to take his life away. It was for the reason that she really was rather lonely, the pretty thing she was, and he wanted her to have someone to talk to, someone to know was always present, when everybody else died away of age and of happy things like that. It was for the reason of sympathy, but that sympathy had grown to respect, and that respect had been kindled to a faint emotion that would have resembled deep affection, had he been mortal. 

"Marivel." He crooned, into the emptiness.

"Hmm?" 

"Nothing. I just wanted to say your name." 

When the window threw down moonbeams instead of yellow sunshine, he reached across the table and brushed the top of her hand with his fingers. She closed her eyes and opened them once, as if waking up from a dream. Watching the sky, something untouchable that she could see that was always out of her grasp, that may have been a dream. Sleepily, she turned to him and leaned for his support as her head lolled on to his shoulder, her cheek grazing his throat. 

"I suppose that sugar and eggs and flour awaits." She whispered, teetering dangerously on the brink of unconsciousness. Sleep was strangely tempting, considering she hadn't slept in a year or two or three. It was usually a human habit, and she was still partly human, believe it or not. She made an attempt at steadying herself and rising, but he held her down.

He nudged the top of her head with his chin. "Maybe. Either the ingredients can wait, or the birds can." 

"Oh, I know why the red birds cry now…people like us always wait a day or two before eventually feeding them." she said, voice softening in a gradual, sort of musical decrescendo. Her eyelids were drooping, he noted with fond amusement. He enveloped her fingers with his hands because she was cold and he was warm, because heat always flows from something of higher temperature to something colder. 

Thirty-five minutes later, in the dark hour of the day, on the eighty-seventh wonderful, beautiful, magnificent year, she said, "Tony." 

"Yeah?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to say your name." 

Author's Notes: For Marivel, because I simply adore her. I was planning this story for quite a while. Very glad I am that I finally got around to doing it! Review or I will lop your head off. Empyrean means, by the way, the highest heaven.


End file.
